Slashdot Mirror
RoadRunner Co-Opting "Organization" Headers
Dusty Rhodes writes: "AOL-Time Warner cable Internet Provider RoadRunner has begun co-opting the 'Organization' line of Usenet headers, replacing whatever information a user enters with 'Organization: Road Runner - (location).' All RoadRunner customers nationwide, including business customers, have had their organization identity hijacked with no disclosure whatsoever, much less an opt-in or even an opt-out. Nothing in their TOS or AUP. Nada."
This is like the advertisement at the end of all Yahoo emails....the "Do You Yahoo" garbage.
My ISP's Usenet Server (NTL in the UK) is set up to add NNTP-Posting-Host: with your IP to every post. So much for Usenet being an anonymous media.
Why are RR chnaging the Organization reference? What do they hope to achieve? The article hints at advertising but how many newsreaders display this line by default and how many people actually display full headers when reading their mail? And how many people would switch providers just because it was mentioned in an e-mail header?
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
The biggest reason I can see is to help cut down on spam. If people try spamming through RR, the recipient will KNOW it came from a RR server, and know where to complain. (Not sure how that HELPS RR, but it's a theory.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Argosoftis an awesome win32 one.
If they are blocking port 25 outbound, you can do what I used to do when the fuckers at earthlink did that. I setup a qmail/proxy machine at work running on port 5000 something and sent all my mail through that, hell if they are to the point of scanning the packets themselves you could always tunnel in as well. The problem is that the majority of people out there are screwed by this and do not have enough knowledge to take recourse against it.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I've noticed this for a long time now. A lot of ISP's are doing that. I don't mind too much since my organization is "Crime" but it is a bit annoying yes. However if you want much better news service at not too much a year, try Newsguy. I used them back when I did a lot of usenet posting and for like $25/year (its gone up a bit since then) I was able to get non-binary access to all my favorite newsgroups. If you want access to binaries you have to pay a bit more, but the service is very customizable to fit your needs. They filtered out 95% of the spam and kept articles for a month, while roadrunner is lucky to keep them a week and seems to have cut corners on spam filtering. So I'd suggest if you are serious about usenet, buy your access (its less then $5/month for basic access) and get higher quality news feed with less spam and full control over those important headers.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Companies aren't there to serve customers.
Companies are there to serve the owners/shareholders. Most of them just want to get the best return on investment they can.
Most people vote for "returns at any cost" with their money, and the companies act accordingly.
When is the last time you've heard people say "oh you can lose a few million this year, just be nice to everyone", until they put a dollar value on satisfied customers, they are going to continue to behave this way because WE make them.
And I don't really care how much RoadRunner screws with their customers, as long as they make money and build my retirement fund for me. Yes it is selfish, but I think that is the way it is.
there's absolutely no "rights" issue here. stop confusing rights with privileges.. you will only dilute this section further.
I've been fired for having an oganization header define as above
There is no innocence in the eyes of an evil man with power. Referring to Judge Roy A. Scoggins 378th District Court
They are your ISP and you are using THEIR machines, hence they may do as they wish...an ISP has every right (though perhaps not ehtical) to ... do whatever they want to incoming/outgoing data
Are you serious? Given your logic, you seem to think it's alright to replace every other header as well (including the X-Priority, or even the TO and FROM). Why stop there? Why not change the message body as well?
Can I play on the slippery slope after you're done with it?
It would be nice if I could the article. The page comes up blank here under Nutscrape 4.79.
Arrggghhh. I hate sites that don't use standard HTML. This page has a f*cked table setup (as normal...)
BWP
The problem is, they didn't bother informing anyone of the fact, they just changed the status. It's like renting a car for a month, and halfway through the rental period they paint it so it says "HERTZ" in neon letters -- sure it's their car, but it would be nice if they let you know before you plunk down your money.
"They are your ISP and you are using THEIR machines, hence they may do as they wish."
They gave up the right to do whatever they wish with their hardware as soon as they started charging you money to use it. An ISP is bound as much to an agreement as a user (if not more so) because of the exchange of money involved, and they should not be able to unilaterally change the terms of the contract without at least informing the customers.
Let's say I post something to Usenet trolling, blasting Microsoft and making wild accusations against them. However, my "Organization" is "RoadRunner." While it may not mean anything legally, doesn't that at least partially imply that I'm speaking on behalf of RoadRunner, and, thus, making it seem like RoadRunner's official corporate stance is whatever nonsense I just accused Microsoft of?
For example, if you work at IBM (arbitrarily chosen company), and routinely send out mail voicing *your* opinion, you'll likely have something to the effect of "These opinions are my own, and not that IBM," so that people don't twist mail you send to your friend into IBM's official position on the issue.
Again, I don't know if this carries any legal weight, but I think RoadRunner is getting themselves into more than they bargained for. (Picture swarms of angry people blaming RoadRunner for whatever their customers post.)
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Its at best a civil matter not "civil rights". You have no right to send email or usenet postings. Those are privileges that you pay for. If your ISP violates your contract sue the bastard.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Not to pour water on a good conspiracy theory, but are people sure this isn't just a misconfigured nnrpd.conf (or equivalent)? It's pretty easy to do; many nntp sites already add an Organization line if there isn't one present -- all it would take is for some admin to foul up a config line.
Not to downplay the significance of companies doing stuff like this, but this may be unintentional. The article doesn't look like it's double-checked the motive.
Ah, computer dating -- it's like pimping, but you rarely have to use the phrase "upside your head" -- Bender
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this a perfectly correct implementation of organization? Whose NNTP server was used? Roadrunner's server. Whose name should be listed under organization, well I can make a strong argument for roadrunner. I fail to see what harm this does to the consumer, and more importantly what "right" is lost. Most clients don't display the header by defualt. It might help someone report spam. The only downside is if you used public usenet to reply to support postings, and wanted to look profesional, and then a private server would be a much more sensible solution(no propagation time, complete control, etc.)
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
Just as I have every right to do what I want in my front lawn (including putting up signs which read "No Fjordboys or Females")
You have the right to put a sign on your lawn which says "No Fjordboys or Females", but the moment you open up your house as a place of business, you can no longer do this. Once its a place of business, you have to abide by certain rules. As such, putting that sign up would be discimination, see civil rights. Its the same way that there is no smoking in any public place in California, even a Tobaco shop. This doesn't mean you can't smoke in your house, but once you open up your house to the public, you have to stop.
Personally I think it's a genius way to get some free advertising. After all Yahoo et al advertise in the signature block of outgoing e-mails - why shouldn't ISPs do a similar thing with Usenet postings too? As to changing the message body - well you're just being silly!
Video Game cheats, hints a
The bottom line here is that, if like the article says, there is nothing in the ToS that guarantees that this wont happen (I start to twitch if I actually read ToS or EULA documents) then I'd say you're at the mercy of the owner of the servers that you use. When I load slashdot, it gives me slashdot content. When I send mail through my ISPs SMTP servers, it adds a header. While the co-opting aspect of this is disturbing, the bottom line is that if you don't like it, run your own NNTP server, or simply use Google Groups or any other alternative news service that delivers what you want, in the way you want it. A lot of people seem to think that Roadrunner is going to get in trouble for this. I just don't see that happenning. I can't even conceive of a way that this could be illegal. But I'm not a lawyer ;)
This too shall pass.
You are exactly correct. This is not really an issue of rights. It's only an issue customer service. A company is failing to provide a service that most paying customers are used to getting. A poor choice on their part, yes, but hardly anything worth marching to the capital steps in Washington over.
In addition to the "Your Rights Online" category, Slashdot really needs a "Big Company Not Treating Their Customers Well" category, because that seems to be what a lot of these stories end up being. Save the YRO banner for DMCA court battles and stuff like that.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Because Yahoo, et. al. are free, they make their money from advertising. I pay my ISP, and if they started requiring me to run programs that displayed banner ads at the bottom of my screen continuously -- in addition to the $45 / mo -- I'd leave ASAP.
I wonder how RoadRunner would feel if some unscrupulous person put Roadrunners email addresses in their reply fields for the spambots to harvest? Gee, I hope no one does that. That would be just awful. Roadrunner receiving tons of unsolicited mail because someone changed some information that they were not asked to. The horror...the horror....
Why stop there? Why not change the message body as well?
Because if you do no one will use your service. Duh.
The problem is that it business users (who obviously pay more for their access) have also had their organization fields co-opted by Roadrunner. As you said, it is very difficult to look professional when your postings state that you are from roadrunner.
It isn't that this particular idea is any good, it is quite dumb IMO.
It is that they should continuously be trying to make more, and improve somehow. Advertising is a good idea, and really rewriting a header doesn't take any CPU load compared to everything else.
to put their name on your post. As if they owned it or something.
That's an interesting thought. By doing this are they claiming some sort of ownership to your post and thus become liable for things in the said post?
When is the last time you've heard people say "oh you can lose a few million this year, just be nice to everyone"
Explain how *NOT* swapping the Organization header would lose them money? They are changing something that they didn't do previously - at best, they may speculatively make a bit more money. It certainly cost them something to do this (maybe only $50 to have someone change something on their NNTP software, and maybe another $100,000 in executive salaries to have meetings about it) but it's at best an unknown amount of money they may generate because of this.
I'd have thought it would have made more sense to add an extra X-header, or tack on RoadRunner at the end of the existing X-header info.
X-Organization: Joe's Place (via RoadRunner)
or something similar. To just replace it full stop is strange, to say the least.
My theory is they are doing this because of the way search engines archive news postings has a ranking on what posts contains links to what URLs and names, this will make RoadRunner appear much more 'popular' in services like google and teoma. However, this will also have a detrimental search engine effect on the very customers RR is supposedly serving, and should cause them to leave (at least a few who realize what's going on). Again, if this is the case, is it worth losing a few customers to potentially gain more (short v long term)? Probably.
creation science book
Well I think that the slightly lesser profit with happy customers is a better company, they will likely stick around, and their profit won't evaporate once a "nicer" company shows up.
It will really get their attention if someone shows up at a shareholder meeting with a list of stupid things the company has done to piss off customers with no benefit to the bottom line.
For the last year (probably even longer) I have noticed RR putting Road Runner in the Organization field on the header. I've never seen them put the actual city name however in the header. This is not late breaking news.
I can't beleive this made the front page on slashdot. First of all the story is false (at least in the upstate New York RR service) second, what's the big deal? For me, I use my full name when posting to newsgroups. Plus with RR you get a fairly static IP address (mine hasn't changed in the last year), how can you be anonymous with that?
Or in Yahoo's case continue to lose money despite the advertising (or have they quietly broken even without telling anyone)? This isn't about banner ads anyway - but the question is would you be willing to pay more /month just for the privelege of being able to set the Organization line when posting to Usenet to whatever you want (which you can do anyway through Deja)?
Video Game cheats, hints a
Doesn't this make it harder for RR "customers" to send out Usenet spam with totally forged headers and remain undetected?
Isn't this a Good Thing for everyone?
In particular it's a Good Thing for all RR customers who don't spam, as it means that other ISPs won't be denying connectivity to RR because of spam.
What have I misunderstood here?
regarding the optional "Organization" header:
"The text of this line is a short phrase describing the organization to which the sender belongs, or to which the machine belongs. The intent of this line is to help identify the person posting the message, since host names are often cryptic enough to make it hard to recognize the organization by the electronic address."
Since "machine" isn't defined within the RFC, I think there's some latitude to allow Roadrunners practice.
(BTW, aren't they owned by AT&T now?)
The guys who run RoadRunner mail hosts seem to be a bit out of it when it comes to how "the Internet" works. Sure, they can figure out some of the stuff, but they get clueless really fast.
For example: They used to have the "From:" header screwed up. When you sent some mail, it said that the sender was "username at the machine that handled all of the mail for the area," not "username at the real address." So for six months or so, when some folks tried to reply to my RR address, their replies bounced. I had to add a "Reply-to" line just to get mail back.
In the case of someone like Hotmail or Yahoo, they clearly state in their TOS that they have the right to add their text to your message. In this case, there was no notification whatsoever. That makes for quite a difference.
One could argue that all of the text of your message (including the headers that your computer put on it) are copyrighted by you. If they change it without authority, they have infringed your copyright. If their TOS mentioned something about it, then by using their service you would give them authority (or a license) to do so. Without that, they should have no right.
The bottom line is that from the Internet's point of view, your ISP and network provider is RoadRunner, so it makes perfect sense to label you as being part of that "organization" in this context. It is both within the letter and spirit of NNTP. To allow you to use your own vanity Organization header would only add confusion and defeats the spirit of the header.
I think the real issues here are obvious. There may in fact be some "grey" area as to what they do or do not do for you as an ISP. The BIG thing is that "they did it behind your back..."
Without properly notifying their users what they were going to do, they leave themselves open to abuse of service. Imagine the phone company decides to change all the area codes in one district from 347 to 342 because they "needed" to expand the area. Now technically, they are allowed to do that; it's understood that the use of phones have increased over the years and maybe some people do need to be moved over to the new area code. But the important thing is that "THEY TELL PEOPLE!"
No one needs to listen but it is essential for a business to notify users. If a user has been forewarned, he indeed has the option to leave the ISP but at least he is given advanced notice so that he can make arrangements to leave without having to have his/her business arrangement changed.
So stop using them. And sue them. Problem solved.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this a perfectly correct implementation of organization? Whose NNTP server was used?
This header predates NNTP
Ok, I'm a RoadRunner customer. I read this and immediately went out to check my posts. Nope, didn't see the text added in any of them. Even posted a new post and still no text.
So, either it's not happening in all areas are this yet another bogus "It was posted on the web so it has to be true" story.
"Since when has RoadRunner allowed you to run servers?"
An NNTP server does not have to be accessible from outside your network. Lots of people run servers such as leafnode (I use cnews) for convenient off-line news reading. RR cannot tell whether an article is being posted by a server or a client. They will still overwrite the "Organization" line, though.
As another poster suggested, sign up with Newsguy.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The biggest reason I can see is to help cut down on spam. If people try spamming through RR, the recipient will KNOW it came from a RR server, and know where to complain.
But they could just as easily add something like "X-Complaints-To:" or "X-ISP:", etc. Rather than deciding that RFC 850 dosn't quite apply to them. The header is for identification of the poster's organisation. Rather than whatever ISP their employer may use...
Or post a Harlan Ellison book.
I don't work for RR but from what I understand as far as Cable ISPs go email/news/webspace is a FREE service that comes along w/your cable Internet.
They don't give credit for downtime on these and they don't consider them mission critical.
If you are so hepped up about your email/news/webspace do it yourself. They are under no obligation to give it to you.
I use RR. My webpage is not rr.com, my email address is not rr.com. I use rr.com to read news (on the few occasions I decide to) only b/c it is fast as shit.
If this were happening to me, I'd change my netnews .sigfile to read
--
If the Organization line on this post says 'RoadRunner', then the opinions expressed here are the official opinions of 'RoadRunner'. They put their name on them, they must approve.
But think about it logically. You may read USENET postings from anywhere on the Net, but you are posting from their server. In this sense, the tagging of the Organization line with their information seems quite proper. Maybe to qualify for your own Organization tag, you need to run your own qualified NNTP server.
And then there is a really damn good reason for doing this. Putting their information on that header also correctly indicates the source of the posting, so it is a valuable tool for tracing a culprit of USENET spam, a task for which I would gladly grant the ISP's the use of that silly header.
Since I added a Perl script to remove Yahoo crap from email to my .procmailrc I haven't seen them again. Still wastes my bandwidth, but no disk space at least
Think about it stupid. A credit card can easily be verified by a computer like they do at Amazon and hundreds of other sites. With photo ID you need paid employees to verify it. Kind of hard running a free services and needing to hire an army of people for monkey work. How are you going to pay them?
If you are using Yahoo or another free service it is normally spelled out in the TOS - and you can reasonably assume - that they will insert information into your e-mail and usenet posts in order to to advertise. This advertising pays for the service you are getting. However, RoadRunner sells access. One could make a reasonably strong argument that without a clearly stated clause in the EUA or TOS (End User Agreement and Terms of Service, respectively) the end user has a reasonable expectation of not having their data tampered with. Clearly RoadRunner is tampering with the data so the question becomes "why am I paying for this service from what appears to be a provider of questionable ethics?"
How about looking into a local ISP and supporting bills which require cable companies to allow competitors in the same way the phone companies are regulated? Instead of only Roadrunner if you want broadband you'd have a couple of choices. just a thought :)
ObTagLine: The more you run over the 'possum, the flatter it gets.
Businesses can. That's why they pay more. I get free business class DSL from my employer and can run servers and have a public IP.
RR here in columbus(OH) has been doing that to me for atleast a year now. Yes, it sucks but I AM using their servers so they can do what they want. I'm not going back to dialup because of it, and most/all DSL providers here are overpriced for alittle 128k pipe. I wish RR would go back to the way they where about 2-3 years ago(before AOL). Damn i was in heaven; stabilty, speed, damn nice price.. fsckin AOL!!
A good sized business will run their own NNTP server anyway and have a real business ISP. But how many small businesses actually use nntp? For what except spamming newsgroups with penile enlargememt ads?
I wonder if some sort of copyright notice could be appended to ones posts allowing their reproduction, but explicitly prohibiting the alteration of headers.
I doubt it would stand up to any sort of court challange, but people screaming about copyright infringement always seem to get lots of attention, possably drawing enough attention to this to embarass RR.
Simple, set a limit on how many messages can be sent from an account. If someone has a legit need for a mailing list for instance than their limit can be raised. Require the person to sign an agreement that states clearly that they can now use the system for spam, at a price of 500 dollars per email. For every message have the smtp server look for typical spam related signs like forged headers, javascript, etc and flag them for human inspection. Charge accordingly.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Roadrunner doesn't let you run your own server when it costs $599 for a static ip? Nah, they let you Truthfully thier prices are horrible, esp. when they really can't offer substantially more QOS then home service.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Make your silly case when the topic/s are the headers: NNTP-Posting-Host, X-Trace, X-Complaints-To.
All concerned RoadRunner customers should change their organization name to "is a sh*tty ISP."
What most people here want is an "(Internet Service) Provider"...someone who gives them a pipe with some IP addresses, and possibly provides DNS, SMTP, POP/IMAP, and NNTP servers, and maybe throws in some web space, and then pretty much gets out of the way.
email/news/webspace is only free if I can get it without paying anything. Last time I checked, that was the definition of 'Free' If I can only get from them by paying $44.95 a month, than that's exactly how much it costs. At $44.95 a month, I most definately have the right to complain if they aren't fulfilling their end of the contract.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I think it's real sporting of them. By identifying themselves as the organization responsible for the messages (not mereley the source of the messages), do they not open themselves to legal action? Shielding their customers, who are small-fry (anything other than AOL/TW, including most countries) by definition.
Seriously, this has all the hallmarks of (rather clever) disgruntled employee sabotage. How much attention do you think the higher-ups at rr even pay to their UseNET service? How closely do you think it is monitered? I'm betting very little and not-at-all. It could be weeks before they really notice/understand, even now.
If I still had UseNET flamewars^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdiscussions, I'd be really pissed; I have roadrunner.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
First, financially, this does not make sense for RoadRunner. Assuming that they are a publicly traded company, which may not be the case, one of the items on their balance sheet is "Customer Good Will". This contributes to the bottom line, and reflects the customer's opinion on the value the company has. Part of the reason for this line item is that your customers are the best advertising you could possibly have. A thousand customers telling others "I use RoadRunner, and I like it." is far more effective for bringing in customers from other ISPs than any cartoon figure on a billboard.
Upsetting your customers by arbitrarily altring things the customer has set up is not good for your buisness. It will show up in the press when some upset customer discovers the situation, and people who are not customers will start asking customer "Why do you use a service that co-opts your creation?"
Except in rare instances, the machine where the message is created, is not the RoadRunner server. The machine where the message was created is the machine that the Organization header is designed to help identify. UseNet pre-dates the Internet and NNTP. Very early users may have had what is called a Bang path. The Bang Path was a list of UUCP hosts that had handled the article. If you were a student or taught at a university, and you posted to UseNet, your article may cross over several different gateways on it's way to some reader. Attempting to identify where the message came from via the path information was often quite difficult. As a result the "Organization" header was created. If you worked off of a VAX box, or other timeshare type system, your system administrator would set the Organization header for you, and it would reflect the University you were at.
Likewise if you are working for XYZ.Corp, your Organization header should reflect that. It is not advertizing for your company, it simply reflects that the machine you posted from is company property.
Home users present a different situation, in that most people do not run businesses from their homes, though they very well could. As a result, the "Organization" header is a bit less meaningful. In fact it is not unusual for people to put things like "Organization: Lost!" or "Organization: Chaos" as their Organization header. This does nothing to identify the host machine, but does say something about the poster.
In any case, RR does not appear to have universally made this change. Frome earlier posts I gather that there is at least one city that does not yet do this. That may have been an oversight on RR's part, or they may have set it up that way so that when it becomes overwellmed with postings they can see the error in their ways.
I am not sure about the issue of what happens when you run a NNTP server of your own. cnews is considered a server, yet from what I read articles originating on a cnews connected host appear to be having their Organization header co-opted as well. I am not sure if this behaviour extends to other NNTP capable servers as well.
Going to an outside host for your UseNet News is always an option. It may not be an easy option, you may have to set up a UUCP host to host process to do so, but it can be done.
-Rusty
You never know...
this certainly puts a damper on any refusal to act as a channel for mega-corporation advertisement. it's like paying lots of money to wear a Nike t-shirt, and not being given the option to turn it inside-out. privacy concerns are also raised, in addition to this question: does ATT really want to be associated with everything their subscribers post?
"lolita bestality, see my daughter home alone with the dog!!!", now brought to you by AT&T broadband internet's New Jersey residential subscribers. ummm... thanks, RoadRunner, heh
"Life is great; without it, you'd be dead." -Harmony Korine
This is correct.. you follow my logic very well. You pay them. You use their service. What you pay them is "rent" if you will for their servers and bandwidth. They may do whatever they want to. You're free to go to another service. It's like if yo urent a house, you're paying the landlord for the right to live there, but he's free to sll the house, or say you can't have animals there, etc.
At least you can get access to nntp
Does this apply only to the RR usenet servers? Or does this apply to ANY usenet server that a RR customer is using?
Big difference. IF RR owns the server and provides it as part of a package, yes it might suck, but its their server and if they want to alter information, I suppose its their right to do so. You don't HAVE to use it. In fact, most ISP based newsservers suck anyways. It wouldn't be a great loss.
A lot of companies do things behind the scenes without putting into their terms of service. A great many isps will run httpd traffic through a cacheing proxy to either save on upstream bandwidth or to record information. One of these schemes makes perfect sense, the other is slimy.
Ok, so they're changing your organization field. Whether this matters or not, you know about it now. If its a problem, use a different news server. However, if they're hijacking nttp packets and "fixing" that information, then you have a BIG problem. At NO point should ANY information I send out be modified. If they want to play games to save bandwidth, fine. But I better get the exact data I request, and the other end better get the same data I send, with no
modifications. THAT would be entering into the realm of arbitrary censorship without permission.
They might STILL be within their rights to do that, but if I were a customer of theirs, I would start shopping around.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
prohibiting alteration from when? By merely sending it, the headers are altered by each and every server that recieves the message. If you post via, say, Earthlink, you'll see different headers reading it via Earthlink than you will reading it via AT&T, which will be different than reading it via RR...
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Hey, I didn't say my theory was right, I just said it was a theory... :-)
Yes, that's what X-Complains is for, and RR does, in fact, use that field. I don't honestly know why they're pushing the organization through..
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I can't stand their usenet servers, they have shitty retention if you can even connect to them, and 75% of the time you try to opn up a newsgroup and the damn thing times out, saying you can't have more then 3 connections running at the same time. I rue the day I switched from DSL. I switched to Cable so I COULD GET massive downloads from a news server alt.binaries.vcd, alt.binaries.movies.divx, etc. Now I've got an ISP where I can get super fast downloads, but I can't find anythign I really want. Thanks alot Road Runner.
What's the big deal? Come on, lots of companies do stuff like this. Viral marketing works a lot better than full blown ad campaign. Look at Yahoo and Hotmail's mail service. At the bottom of every email they have a "Get your free email account at Yahoo.com" or "Get your free email account at Hotmail.com" Why don't people make a big deal about that? You use their service, you have to deal with those types of things. They could easily not provide a free nntp service to you, but they do as part of your service plan. If you want to use another service, there are plenty on the net.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
you are one of the people that just doesn't understand how much cable costs.
I am on cable. I pay $49.95/mo. I get a steady 3mbit connection. No peak hours, no crap. Just steady bandwith. That's nearly 2 fucking T1's.
You tell me that two T1s to your house costs $49.95? Woah. You own.
You're paying for bandwith. Not the fucking email or news. Believe me.
It would be nice... but hey it's their car and they can do as they please with it.
Well actually I didn't invest in MS, they have a PE of over 40. They have little real room for expansion in their core business. They break the law, they ideally should be punished. They make a substandard product. Other then existing market share, and name recognition they have no real protection against competition. I didn't invest in them.
I think a good well run business with happy customers is a great idea, and that is what I invest in, not just the S&P 500.
The TOS doesn't explicitly state the right that RR can take away my chosen usenet header, so it can be assumed that I can choose my header. To compare this to other examples, the TOS doesn't explicitly state that I can't use ICQ, but it can be assumed that I can, because they didn't say I couldn't. The TOS doesn't explicitly say I can't go to website X, but it can be assumed that I can....
Your argument is weak. No wonder you're an AC.
You're paying for bandwith. Not the fucking email or news. Believe me.
No, he's paying for a combination of services that include email / news / etc. Like Hans said, it is only free if he can access it without paying anything.
You tell me that two T1s to your house costs $49.95? Woah. You own.
You are comparing apples to oranges.
-jerdenn
this one interested me, as I've been a RoadRunner customer for nearly 3 years now...
so I did a test message to myself. upon receipt of said test message, I found nothing had changed in the header of my message sent thru them - my Organization still showed as Organization: -= Borderline =-.
Perhaps this is only done when the message does not contain an Organization line, or perhaps you are using a different set of mail servers than myself.
-Pat
kc.rr.com, btw
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
I don't see the problem here. The Organization: field gets set by the NNTP server that carried the message onto the 'net. This is great, it provides quite a bit more authenticity for messages.
I'm building a little groupware server that supports SMTP/POP/IMAP (among other things) and I do something even more heinous, to prevent open relaying: if you're not using authenticated SMTP, you can't deliver a message that claims to be from one of the server's own domains -- and if you are using authenticated SMTP, it rewrites the From: header line, forcing the message to appear authored by the user you logged in as.
Internet tradition and even some RFC's say that it's a sin to alter the message content, but in an era where people on the 'net just can't be trusted anymore, I think that's an obsolete concept.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
X-Roadrunner-Status: It Sucks today and probably more tommorrow
or if you want your own organization use:
X-Organization: [Your company name]
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
"Have a big pipe? Blah blah blah," that SF has been placing at the bottom of developer mailing list messages.
And so how did Netscape pay their bills? How about FreeAgent?
The purpose of freeware, is sometimes to get people to see your product. Then when they want the "advanced" features, people pay, already trusting your product. They mention the higher bandwith does cost.
I do agree with the basic idea of your retort, however.
As for needing a credit card, it does seem scary, but not knowing either way, I posting the comment. Apparently a couple moderators thought that to be off-topic. Oh well.
Have you read my journal today?
That's all newsguy and the other binariez hostz are for, gets warez. Don't LIE! dumass
All the action packed multimedia you will ever need:
alt.binaries.pictures.motorcycles.sportbike
Zero budget films shot locally rule. All else is warez and pr0n for the PFY's.
I have had RR for over two years and it has been doing that since I joined up.
Got anything interesting?
Could this make them legally liable for the posted content? It would make it harder to claim that they are just a "common carrier" since they change the headers and claim ownership.
....then you need to start posting opinions they'd rather not own, such as comments about monopolies being bogusly abusive, questioning and/or declaring the ownership of copyrights on the content of the postings, self-contradictory statements, Top Ten Bad Things about Steve Case, etc....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Updated Newsguy pricing can be found here: (http://newsguy.com/overview.htm). Executive summary:
Basic newsgroup access (10MB/day download cap): $40/year
Add a couple of email addresses and website/storage: $5.95/month (i.e. $72/year)
Up the daily download cap to 500MB/day: 12.95/month (or pay per year for $80/year)
As far as I can tell, all accounts seem to have access to the binaries groups, but 10MB/day will be frustrating if you want to actually use those newsgroups.
No, I'm not affiliated with Newsguy. Never used their service, so I don't know how good they are (or aren't).
----
Open mind, insert foot.
It's just possible that this was set up by RR admins who are trying to follow established guidelines. Roadrunner really does a crummy job of providing, to say nothing of supporting, newsgroups. It's unlikely that any corporate decision was made about promoting the company by using the Organization: header. It's too obvious that there is absolutely no concern from the powers that be about Usenet. Except that they'd probably like to drop it entirely, to save $.
Actually (IANAL) it's when you hire someone to work in said premises. The anti-smoking law is to protect employees. If the business is run purely by the owners, then the law does not apply. The cigar bar in SF is a good example:
http://bayarea.citysearch.com/profile/11345253/
The intent of RFC 1036 means nothing.
Laws are what really matter. Since RFC 1036 is not a law, RR can play around with NNTP as long as they don't break it.
What RR is really doing is providing a mechanism for copyright holders to track down those individuals who post copyrighted materials on Usenet so that they can be prosecuted for their infractions.
What does this have to do with YRO? Doesnt seem like any rights are violated here.
.
The problem with this method of thinking is that unlike an apartment or rented house, ISP's (broadband in particular) are harder to come by in some places. Here, where I live, the only broadband provider is adelphia. There are others, but at a couple hundred bucks for an installation, and then a few hundred a month after, I can't afford that.
Expounding upon that, I'm not about to go back to dial-up.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
My response to this would be that the tag changes the organization from which the mail is percieved to have come from without telling me first. Although 95% of the internet may not care, the 5% that write software and routing mail may have a problem with it.
Think of it like putting ingredients on a box. Most people would DEMAND to high-hell that they be told what's in a particular food item but when's the last time you looked at what ingredients were in a can of soup? Now admittedly you can argue what's the big deal and maybe it's not a big deal since only 1% of the population that buys the can of soup would actually read it. Would it hurt them? Probably not. But it's important that they be given the opportunity to know if something is different or special in there.
In all honesty, if they were upfront with it, it wouldn't matter. Spell it out in the license agreement and let those who are "picky" about what they want have the opportunity to opt out...those who don't care go ahead and join.
Besides which how does the area code change the functionality? It still makes the phone calls, you just punch more numbers in...